[Python-Dev] Fixing the GIL (with a BFS scheduler) (original) (raw)

Bill Janssen janssen at parc.com
Sun May 16 22:57:06 CEST 2010

Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

Bill Janssen wrote: > Right now, I'm faced with the prospect of Apple's next OS including > Python 2.7, and being saddled with the current Python 2.x terrible > multicore behavior for the next 5 years or so. We badly need some kind > of patch for this in the 2.x branch.

The matter of the GIL seems far less urgent to those of us that don't see threading as a particularly good way to exploit multiple cores.

Nick, this isn't about exploiting cores. This is about Python programs that used to work fine on single-core machines suddenly becoming horrible resource hogs when moved to a more modern machine with a more modern version of Python. As far as I'm concerned, just tying all of the program's threads to a single core would be fine, though I imagine others would differ.

Either way, with the first 2.7 release candidate out soon, it's already too late to contemplate significant changes to the GIL for that release.

The release schedule, and labelling things as "release candidates" or not, are all under our control. Nothing is "too late". And there's always Python 2.8 :-). But I'd consider this a bug in the threading library, not some unmotivated blue-sky change to the GIL.

Bill

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